The five students, William L. Griffin, Marvous Saunders, Michael Proctor, Cecil T. Washington, Jr., and Gwendolyn Greene, were convicted of criminal trespass in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County and ordered to pay a fine of $100.

The convictions were upheld in the Maryland Court of Appeals, noting the arrests were "an enforcement by the operator of the park of its lawful policy of segregation," and did not constitute any acton by the state.

[2] The Supreme Court had previously found that state action in support of segregation was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Pennsylvania v. Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia, 353 U.S. 230 (1957).

The Court concluded the arrests by the deputy sheriff, acting under his own authority, constituted state action enforcing a policy of segregation and was therefore in violation of this clause.

[3] These decisions were announced two days after the Senate ended a filibuster and passed the bill which would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[3] which outlawed segregation in public accommodations.